


These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

by Savageandwise



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hallucinations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22774123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageandwise/pseuds/Savageandwise
Summary: Julie invents a guardian angel to watch over her after the events of the Anubis. Or does she?
Relationships: Julie Mao/Joe Miller
Comments: 12
Kudos: 36





	1. Anubis

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to pay tribute to these characters I really loved. I liked the romantic cast to their relationship and wanted to give them a little more time together without really changing the canon.
> 
> I took liberties with the dialogue. And left some parts out for flow. Let me know what you think! There's a part 2...maybe...
> 
> The title is from Romeo and Juliet.

She dreamed him into existence. Those long days and nights on the Anubis, delirious with thirst and boredom. She dreamed his long, lean frame, the sound of his laughter, bitter and dry as kindling. He barked orders at her most of the time, told her to save her water, to stretch. He told her not to think about the things she couldn't change. She liked the way he called her 'Julie'. Reverently, as if she were a being so sacred you only took its name in your mouth on rare special occasions.

"Please," she begged him. "Please don't leave me alone."

He promised her he wouldn't. His hand was heavy and warm on her cheek. Julie closed her eyes and let herself believe that he was real. His fingers were long. Belter fingers. He slid them through her tangled hair, his thumbs massaging the sore spots on her temples. Faced with death, her mind had created a guardian angel to watch over her. Of course she'd fabricated a Belter, hadn't she made it her life's work to save his kind? A Belter, with a strange sense of humour and haunted eyes. An older man. No escaping that Daddy complex even now. 

She imagined them together in some cafe on Ceres, the way people stared at them covertly, wondering who they were to each other. He reached for her hand, brushed his fingertips over her knuckles. The act wasn't possessive. It felt as though he needed to remind himself that she was there. He touched her like she was made of glass. She leaned forward, brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. 

"They're trying to figure out if we're lovers," she whispered. "Why don't you kiss me? Give them a little thrill?"

She blinked again and she was back on the Anubis. Day eight on the Anubis, not a drop of water left. No one was coming to save her. He told her it was now or never.

"You don't want to die," he reminded her. "You want to race again. You want to piss Daddy off or make him proud. Or both. You want to live."

She would never have gotten out without him, never reached Eros. She'd have died out there in space. Later, in the Blue Falcon, she wished to God she had.

On Eros she tried to reach Dawes, she begged him to send help. She begged. She'd already vomited up the water she'd barely managed to swallow. Her pride was in tatters, she didn't care if Dawes heard her cry.

"Stupid," her guardian angel said. "Dawes is OPA scum, he's not fit to polish your boots." 

I'm OPA scum, Julie thought but she didn't have the energy to argue with her imaginary friend. She was dying. She could feel her body breaking down bit by bit. She had already smashed every light fixture in the room, the built in terminal and then finally the hand terminal she'd stolen, the incessant buzzing had been driving her insane. Her skin was cracked, beneath the shreds of flesh something glowed a sinister blue. She was transforming into a monster. Stripped naked, Julie crawled on her hands and knees into the tiny bathroom. The carpeted floor was filthy, but so was she, covered in vomit and excrement.

"Don't be afraid," he said softly. 

She could barely raise her head to look at him. He sat on the floor beside her and she rested her forehead against his knee. He put his hand on her forehead, it was cool and dry.

"What's your best memory?" she asked him.

"You," he answered.

She managed a weak smile, it was sad that she was so desperate for affection, she had invented someone to admire her. In her mind, she constructed a scene that might deserve the label "best memory". A bright, clean room that smelled like freshly cut flowers. There was the sound of sweet birdsong. In an ornate wire cage, a pet bird beat its wings against the bars. He unlatched a cage door and let the bird out. 

"It'll fly away," she warned him.

"What's that saying? If you love something set it free?" 

The windows were open and she could smell the impending storm heavy in the air. 

"It's going to rain," she explained.

He took her hand and pulled her out into the garden. The grass was wet and their feet were bare. He looked like a young boy with his arms spread wide, like he was trying to embrace the whole fucking universe. She couldn't help but laugh out loud. When it started to rain he tipped his head back and let the drops fall into his mouth.

"What does it taste like?" Julie asked.

"Freedom," he said.

She leaned against the wall in the shower in the grimey Blue Falcon room. It was hard to breath now. He was standing in the doorway. Wearing a hat and holding on to a strand of silver beads. She recognised her own necklace. The bird fluttered at his shoulder. That was just a dream, Julie thought. I made that up, I made you up.

"What's your best memory?" he asked her.

She tried to conjure up the feeling of racing in the Razorback, the exhilaration, the blood pounding in her temples. She'd felt unstoppable, immortal. It was her one true taste of freedom. Maybe it was gone now, maybe her father had sold it.

"Just want to see it one last time," she whispered.

"You will," he assured her.

She was too weak to shake her head. She thought she saw her mother in the gloom, leaning down to take her hand.

"Please, Mummy," she pleaded. "Don't let him sell the Razorback."

Ariadne didn't answer her, she kissed her cheek instead. She did love her, she was proud of her after all. When she tried to turn to get a better look at her she dissolved like soap bubbles. He was still there though. She could feel his presence like a reassuring smile on the face of someone you trust. How could he be more real than her own mother?

"I want to go home," Julie cried. "Will you take me home?"

He nodded at her from the doorway. He was the last thing she saw before it all went blue.


	2. Eros

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was different, she was wrong. Right and wrong, dream and reality, it was all blue, blue, blue. But him she knew. He belonged with her.
> 
> Julie and Miller on Eros.

"You need to come back to me now."

Julie opened her eyes. It felt as though they had been sealed shut, she had to break the membrane to see properly. It felt like she was opening them for the first time. 

There was a man in a spacesuit standing in front of her. It took her brain a few moments to place everything she saw. To understand that this was reality, the Razorback was a dream. She was different, she was wrong. Right and wrong, dream and reality, it was all blue, blue, blue. But him she knew. He belonged with her.

"Julie," he said. "We never really officially met. I'm Miller."

Miller. Such an ordinary name for an angel. He told her they were on the asteroid that was Eros station. When she thought about it she found she already knew that. Eros was a part of her now. She was no longer just Julie. Everyone was woven together, a tapestry of consciousness, and they were moving fast towards Earth. The whole asteroid was hurtling towards her home planet like a bullet from a gun. Home. Home, her blood sang. She longed for Earth's gravity. He told her she needed to stop, they couldn't go home. Why? Julie couldn't understand.

She could see a multitude of futures stretched out before her like row upon row of playing cards. In one possible future they hit Earth, fire engulfed everything, the blaze was glorious. On Earth they could spread and spread, feed upon everything. She struggled with the hive consciousness but it was larger than she was and unwieldy. The brakes were shot and she couldn't steer. It was just cards. You win some, you lose some.

"We could go to Venus," he suggested. "You have to try, honey."

She turned over the next card, then the next. They were no longer laid out in front of her in neat rows. She could make no sense of the towers of playing cards in front of her. She didn't know how to turn them over without sending the whole structure crashing down. Venus. Earth. What difference did it make? 

"Good people will die if you don't stop it," Miller said. "People you fought for."

People would die. 

This tickled the back of her mind. There was something there. Something she'd been passionate about. She'd been willing to die for it.

Yes, Julie remembered now, people were worth fighting for. She clenched her insides, exerted her will. She shook her head from side to side. It was too difficult. She was so tired of fighting. 

"Julie…" Miller said gently. "I came an awfully long way to find you. Because I believe in you."

He didn't sound like a man who was used to speaking gently. It was difficult to focus on him with the collective inside her, clamouring to be heard. In the end it was that awkward gentleness that forced her to pay attention. Julie remembered gentleness. The soft touch of her mother's hand, her sister's shy smile, the sweetness of a lover's words. She still craved those things. Part of her was still human. 

Miller opened his helmet and discarded it. He stripped off the protective padding and his gloves. The sight of his bare head stilled the tumultuous voices in her head. He promised her she wasn't alone. She wasn't, she never would be again and now, he would be part of it too.

Miller took her hand in his and pressed his mouth to her knuckles. She could feel the warm, dry pressure of his lips on her skin. Skin that no longer had nerve endings. She remembered the feeling though. She remembered the prickle of longing.

"You belong with me," Julie said.

He leaned down and kissed her mouth and the cards all came tumbling down, all the King's horses, all the King's men. None of that mattered anymore. She could feel him sliding into her. Piece by piece of him. It was more intimate than an act of love. All at once she understood with absolute certainty that he was real. She hadn't invented him. He was real and all that he was was part of her now. All that she was was part of him.

They were in the garden, it was still raining. He leaned down to wipe the wet from her face. She blinked up at him. He had a kind face, looking at him calmed her.

"I made this for you," Julie said.

Miller nodded. "It's beautiful."

Rain soaked their hair and clothes, trickled into their eyes and mouths, like the final scene in Breakfast at Tiffany's. She kissed him again, delighting in the way his mouth fell open, the soft sound of surprise that issued from it. It wasn't a real love story. They had only just officially met. It felt right though. In a world where nothing felt right.

He lifted her off the ground effortlessly and Julie wrapped her arms around his neck, felt the spurs at the top of his spine where the bones didn't fuse right. The detail, which told the story of his wretched childhood, made her chest ache with empathy for him. Her chest didn't ache in reality. She would never feel real pain again. It was only a memory. 

"It's not real," she said sadly when he set her back down on the wet grass. "It never happened. It can never happen. We can't go home."

Miller put his hands on her shoulders. The sun was out now, blue patches bloomed in the grass: forget-me-nots.

"Don't you know every time you remember something, your mind changes it just a little?" he asked.

He bent to pluck a stalk of the fragile bloom, threaded it into her hair. He curled his hand soft against her cheek. 

"Your best and your worst memories...They're illusions. This is as real as anything that ever happened, Julie."

Julie understood now. "I made it and now it's forever. Fo sémpere." 

They made the story whatever they wanted it to be.

"Fo sémpere," Miller agreed.

Julie held Miller in her arms. He rested his head upon her breast, listening to the heart that no longer beat. When they hit Venus they couldn't feel the flames. They built a new world to replace the broken one. An Eden.


End file.
